The invention relates to a method according to the preamble of claim 1, and further to a method as described in the preambles of the claims 7 and 12, respectively.
The present invention is operative and applicable in a field of the art directed to monitoring and controlling bioprocesses. A bioprocess is understood to mean a process of which a living organism forms an important part and in which such an organism plays a corresponding role. In such a process, there is always a bioresponse, which is understood to mean the reaction of such an organism to its environment. This environment is denoted in more detail as everything which is not genetically determined with regard to such an organism, and particularly relates to the microenvironment around and near such an organism.
As examples of bioresponse, which can generally be denoted as the whole of reflections of the metabolic activity of such an organism, particularly temperature and pulse can be mentioned, as well as many other responses which are well known to a skilled person. In order to be able to scan, monitor and measure such responses, in manners known to a skilled person, suitable sensors and equipment whose action is physical or chemical are used for this purpose. It will be clear to any skilled person what is meant by this, also including combinations of actions, and for instance also biochemical action.
During scanning, monitoring and measuring, such bioresponses are expressed in biovariables, while the scanning, monitoring and measuring with the sensors and equipment takes place by means of bioresponse signals.
Such measurements take place online. It will be clear that, in the case of monitoring and controlling, the processing of the bioresponse signals is real-time. It further needs to be noted that such bioprocesses are examples of dynamic processes. The scanning, monitoring and measuring are also considered dynamic, which is, in the field of signal processing, understood to mean that the sampling frequency, or sampling rate, follows the well-known Nyquist theorem. Hereinafter, accordingly, in addition to ‘dynamic’, ‘continuous’ will also be used, which clearly expresses that such bioresponses relate to a bioprocess of a living organism which proceeds and continues without interruptions.
The present invention relates to a particular bioprocess, namely the incubation process. This is known to be a very complex process whose ranges of temperature and gas concentrations in the microenvironments around and near a hatching egg are roughly known, but where pre-entered controls are not adequate to optimally guide such an organism. While the living space as a whole accommodates groups, collections or colonies of such organisms, and it is not uncommon to measure and to control therein, precisely such an approach will always relate to an average to which the bioresponses as such are indirectly related at most. Precisely in the bioresponse, the previous history of a hatching egg itself is implicit, with options to be considered being age and feed of the laying hens, as well as the laying season and the climate in the coops; in other words, each batch of hatching eggs will accordingly shown other responses.
A method according to the preamble of claim 1 is known from WO02098213. Therein, a method and a system for controlling and monitoring bioprocesses are described, in particular controlling and monitoring growth processes of living organisms such as cattle and poultry, including monitoring bioresponse phenomena. More in particular, the manner is described in which bioresponse signals are used as measuring signals of bioresponse variables in a model in order to thus dynamically and accurately monitor and control the growth process of an animal in order to increase the economic quality of the animals, for instance the production of biomass. It is described in detail how a model, and the mathematical basis thereof, for online modeling and real-time processing of measured signals is formulated by means of which a control according to the MPC principle (model predictive control) is used.
Up to now, it has been found hardly possible to carry out online measurements in a hatching chamber, in particular online measuring in the microenvironments around hatching eggs. An explanation for this is to be found in the fact that the hatching chamber forms a very complex living space, comprised in a construction and dominated by a climate whose parameters are not only linked to each other in an extremely complex manner, but by which, further, the microenvironments around the hatching eggs, often many tens of thousands, cannot unambiguously be monitored and be controlled. In particular, this has entailed that the right instrumentation was often lacking.